Bowman the Chairman
Nick Bowman, new chairman of the South East Point-To-Point Supporters' Club, has been involved in the sport for most of his life. As the son of a permit holder, he grew up amidst the routine clamour of a working stableyard, later becoming a point-to-point jockey, then owner — and the husband of trainer Sally Bowman. Like many whose lives are touched even briefly by the sport, it has somehow become imprinted in his DNA.
When we think about point-to-pointing and its future it is to people like Nick that we turn. People who exemplify the amateur ethos of it all, who care deeply about the history and tradition that has conditioned the way the sport has evolved, who are not oblivious to the harsh realities of modern life and politics that intrude from time to time to threaten the way things are done. The important thing is to somehow keep it going. Somehow.
Some 13 years ago point-to-pointing was caught in the crossfire of class warfare. Despite vigorous resistance, most people acknowledged that a ban on foxhunting was inevitable. Amateur steeplechasing as we knew it would be the first casualty and lost forever - or so it was feared.
There were people around even then who cared as much about point-to-pointing as others did about hunting. Nick Bowman was one of them, and when the Supporters' Club was just a gleam in the eyes of a few he was one of the stalwarts who stepped forward and helped to make it happen. Within a couple of months there were 400 or more members, badges were proudly worn, meetings bristled with people and ideas and there was a solid feeling that even if the hunts ceased to exist we'd somehow keep the sport alive. There was some understandable resentment from some in the hunting fraternity - they had their priorities, after all, and pointing wasn't necessarily one of them. There was misunderstanding, too. Some of the same hunting folk were suspicious of the Club's real motives, while others felt that any spare energy should be devoted to fighting the impending ban, not to seeking to preserve the sporting spin-off.
In the event the spiteful metropolitan majority had its way, the hunting ban arrived and point-to-pointing, well prepared, carried on as if nothing much had happened. Except that as one threat to the future of pointing evaporated, so did the Club's membership, which now stands at around half that original healthy number.
" Today there are other less obvious threats and just as great a need for support," says Nick. "The cost of putting on a race meeting is very high - often well above £22,000. Not all fixtures make a profit, so you can understand the reservations and difficulties that confront some organisers. It is often said that they could make more money running a sponsored ride. Over the years the Club has injected something like £75,000 into the sport. Not one penny has gone directly to the hunts - it has all been channelled through the Area to pay for things like safety equipment, radio hire, and other race-day running costs. We need to keep this going, especially with a recession looming.
In accepting the chairmanship of the Club, Nick paid tribute to his predecessor, Howard Jarvis. "There couldn't have been a better man for the job, and his personal charm, wide network of contacts and sheer ability helped steer the Club through some very tricky moments in the early days. I'm so glad that he's still there in the background to lean on!"
"My ambition is to get the membership back up to 400. In theory it should be even more, but in recent years even some jockeys and owners have failed to join the Supporters' Club and I hope this will change - especially now we have Cynthia Haydon and Nick Pearce banging the drum for us. I hope each member will set themselves a personal target of recruiting at least one other from among their friends and families - or buy them a subscription for Christmas!
"The one thing that brings us all together is our collective love of the sport. We may have survived the hunting ban, but our efforts and our fundraising are still vital to the future of point-to-pointing in Kent, Surrey and Sussex."
